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Goldfields 1986
- Year
- 1986
- Machine
- Commodore 64
- For
- Jacaranda Software
- Written in
- BASIC compiled with Blitz!, with a BASIC loader and 6502 around it
Trevor Jacob's simulation of life on the colonial goldfields: you start on the wharf at a colonial port, penniless, with one year to make your fortune. Greg Perry and Mark Wharton programmed the Commodore 64 version, as its title screen credits them.
Every part of 64K
The Commodore 64 has 64K of memory, but three stretches of it, 20K in all, lie under BASIC's ROM, the I/O chips and the KERNAL's ROM. Goldfields uses every part of it: the game below them, its text routines above it, and 313 of its 423 texts in the RAM beneath the ROMs and the chips, which it reads a byte at a time by switching the ROMs out.
Blitz!'s compiled code is about a third smaller than the same program as BASIC's text, and measured, that text and its variables would not fit where the game is.
Who made it
Trevor Jacob
Author and designer: the game, and the handbook that comes with it
Mark Wharton
Programmer, the Commodore 64 version, with Greg Perry
Greg Perry
Programmer, the Commodore 64 version, with Mark Wharton; his company, GP Software, held the contract
Jacaranda Software
Publisher, for the Apple II, BBC Micro and Commodore 64, and IBM-compatible PCs
Greygum Software
Took over the publishing rights; the Windows and OS X versions, 2007
GP Software
Greg Perry's company, which held the contract
From the archive
